Hello everyone, hope you're all enjoying this years E3 event, and thanks for joining me on my rundown and review of Microsoft's conference! It's no surprise to anyone that Xbox One has been having a hard time this generation. Compared to it's competition they just don't have nearly as many great games to play, and even the most die hard Xbox fans are starting to lose their patience. This years E3 had to be huge for them, and Wow did they come prepared. Right from the start of their presentation Phil Spencer announced that they would be showcasing 50 games, with 18 of them being Xbox Exclusives, and 15 world premiere titles. That's pretty impressive, and they delivered, not wasting any time talking about new console features that nobody cares about. 50 games is a lot, so I'm not going to talk about each one, but I will hit the highlights, and give my thoughts, so let's begin.
To start off I want to talk about their exclusive game announcements. There were quite a few, but honestly the only ones that stood out were the usual suspects that everyone probably already expected. That's not to say these aren't amazing games, but there was nothing that caught me off guard, as far as exclusive titles. To begin their conference Microsoft showed us the new Halo Infinite.
A new Halo game is to be expected for Microsoft, but this time it looks like the series is returning to Earth, or at least an Earth like planet. I'm sure this will make many fans of the series very happy, and another surprise that will surely please fans is the return of Master Chief. This game will continue his story, to what degree we don't know yet, but it's great to see him back in action. The trailer ended with the name reveal, Halo Infinite, but no release date information, so I would expect to see this next year sometime.
Crackdown 3 made another appearance at this years E3, this time showing us the longest gameplay trailer yet. More of the gameplay mechanics were shown, like the destructible environments, the ability to morph your vehicle into a tank, the ability to drive up walls, and some shoot outs with new enemies. This game has been shown at E3 since 2014, but from the looks of this new trailer we should be getting this sometime soon, probably early 2019.
Next we have the amazing looking Forza Horizon, with it's 4th entry into the series. The developers announced that this will take place in Britain, will be a shared open world where you can talk to other drivers and set up races with them, will feature dynamically changing seasons that will completely change the terrain and open up new routes, and will be releasing October 2nd, 2018. These games look amazing, and all the new features are really interesting, but the driving style never meshed with me. I know there's loads of people who are probably very excited to play this, but it's also something everyone expected to see there.
The next big tentpole franchise to hit the stage was of course Gears of War. At first they were showing off some kind of POP figure, Gears crossover game that I don't think anybody cared about. I personally don't like those figures, so I had no interest in this. Then they talked about a Windows exclusive Gears Tactics game, that looks like a cross between XCOM, and Gears. But finally they showed us Gears of War 5, a brand new actual entry into the series, where you'll be controlling the character Kait, as she goes on a personal mission that they didn't give us many details about. I always enjoy these games, and I really hope this one will be great.
There were some other exclusives mentioned, but nothing that really had much of an impact on me. Mostly small little indie games, that I'm sure some people will be excited about, but they definitely aren't going to sell consoles, or win over jaded Xbox fans that were hoping for something new. Although Microsoft did show a ton of games, and I have to give them credit for not wasting any time with new console features, the ones that got me hyped are games that are coming out for PlayStation as well. Let's take a look at my personal highlights of the entire conference.
First up is the new game by FromSoftware, the makers of Dark Souls and Bloodborne. When this game was first teased last year I was really hoping it was Bloodborne 2. It's not though, but it still has me very excited. The game is called SEKIRO: Shadows Die Twice, and it looks similar to NIOH, another game that had an ancient Japanese style. This will no doubt feature the same level of difficulty that FromSoft games are famous for, but there were some new mechanics that I noticed. The main character seems to have lost his arm, and now has a mechanical one that can shoot out a grappling hook. This will open up a lot of different ways to go about the combat. Another new ability seems to be fireworks that shoot from the arm as well. Hopefully we will learn more about this soon, but all we know for a release date is 2019.
Devil May Cry 5 was finally announced, with new gameplay footage, and confirmed returning characters, Dante and Nero. It's been 10 years since Devil May Cry 4 came out, and now we are getting the true sequel, not some reimagining of the series, like with DMC. This franchise has had a difficult time hitting it's stride, with only a couple good games out of a handful. Hopefully this one will be able to bring back the magic of the original, while also bringing some fun new features to the table. This is still a ways off though, with a release date of Spring 2019.
Dying Light was an excellent open world zombie survival game, that had a dynamic day to night cycle, where in the daytime you were able to roam the city, looking for recourses, and at night the streets were filled with fast moving zombies. This sequel looks to be building on that foundation with a bigger, new map, and branching storylines that are determined by your decisions while playing. If you choose to help a certain group it will have a domino effect that will change various elements of the city. Or if you choose to take them out, that will also have an effect. They didn't get into too many specifics, but they did show multiple branching plot points, giving every player a unique experience. I'm not sure when to expect this, as there was no release date given.
Finally Microsoft ended their conference with a small look at CD Project Red's new game, Cyberpunk 2077. I'm a huge fan of the Witcher 3, so I was very happy to see more of this developers new project, and from the looks of it, this is going to be amazing. Set in a futuristic dystopian world, where people augment their bodies to basically have superpowers, and taking place in a sprawling city this should be a worthy successor to the masterpiece that was the Witcher 3. Very little was actually shown, and no release date was given, but it was a good way to end the conference.
Microsoft needed to hit it out of the park this year, and although they made some steps in the right direction, it still wasn't enough to win over the fans that have been living off of scraps for the past four years. No big new exclusive games were announced, and everything that peaked my interest will also be coming to PS4. Not only that, but almost every game had either no release date, or one for 2019, which means there is no game to look forward to this year. With no big holiday release this conference was a little disappointing, but still lightyears better then last years E3. The Gamepass is a good feature that Xbox has, and it was great to see Phil Spencer reassuring people that Microsoft still heavily invested in making the Xbox One great, but it might be too little too late for some. What did you think about their presentation? Did it give you everything you wanted, or did it let you down? Feel free to let me know down in the comments below, and have a great day. I'm going to give Microsoft's E3 2018 conference a grade of...…………………..
B-
Thank you for checking out my coverage of this years E3, I hope you enjoyed it!
Oh shit you went I'm so jealous man
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nice ^^